• Nicki Minaj made a surprise appearance at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Texas for the Starship V3 launch attempt
• The launch was scrubbed at around T-minus 40 seconds due to a hydraulic pin failure in the launch tower arm
• Minaj wore a SpaceX Starship T-shirt and praised Elon Musk live on the webcast, calling the moment “historic”
• SpaceX even issued a statement apologizing to Minaj after the scrub went viral, as her song “Starships” became the internet’s punchline of the night
• The next launch attempt was scheduled for Friday evening between 6:30 and 8 PM EDT

Nobody had Nicki Minaj at a rocket launch on their 2026 bingo card. And yet, there she was — SpaceX Starship T-shirt on, front row at Elon Musk’s Starbase facility in South Texas — ready to watch history happen. The universe, unfortunately, had other plans.

SpaceX attempted the first-ever launch of its new Starship V3 megarocket on Thursday evening, only for technical issues to kill the countdown at around T-minus 40 seconds. The culprit? A hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place that simply refused to retract. Musk confirmed the issue on X, adding that a second launch attempt would happen Friday evening if engineers could get it fixed in time.

For Minaj — whose 2012 global anthem “Starships” contains the lyric we’re higher than a motherf***er, which was supposed to be the vibe — the timing was almost cosmically cruel. She was reportedly just six minutes away from watching her first-ever live rocket launch when things went sideways.

“This Is Historic. This Is a Major Moment, Y’all”

Minaj’s appearance on the SpaceX livestream caught even the webcast hosts off guard. One of them noted, almost cheerfully, that anyone can come watch the launches — they’re open to the public — before turning to a visibly thrilled Minaj in her branded tee. “This is a lot of fun, I am excited,” she said.

When a host told her there were six and a half minutes left in the countdown, she lit up. “6 minutes left. Oh my gosh, this is historic, this is a major moment,” she said. She confirmed it was her first time seeing a rocket launch in person and didn’t hold back on the praise for the man who made it all possible. “Major shout-out to Elon,” she said directly into the camera. “Elon, thank you for everything that you’re doing for humanity. He’s the man, for sure.”

Musk welcomed her on X with a post captioned “Welcome to Starbase, @NICKIMINAJ!” — sharing footage of her cameo with his 200-million-plus followers. Minaj responded: “Thank you! It’s such a magical place.”

SpaceX communications head Dan Huot explained during the webcast why the team couldn’t push through the issues: “We’re learning about a lot about these systems as we execute them for the first time, and we’re not able to basically troubleshoot all of these issues in those final seconds to get to launch.” He described the attempt as effectively a wet dress rehearsal — the vehicles were fully fueled, but liftoff never came.

The Internet Immediately Lost It

Once the scrub was official, the memes arrived faster than any rocket could travel. The irony of the “Starships” singer showing up to watch a Starship that never left the ground was too good for the internet to let go. “Starbase? More like star-based queen,” one viral post read. Others joked that the next attempt would feature “pink thrusters, backup dancers, and DJ Khaled yelling ‘Another one!’ from mission control.”

Not everyone was charmed. One commenter wrote, “Why the [expletive] would you invite Nicki Minaj to Starbase? The relevancy is mind boggling…” Others questioned what her presence had to do with scientific advancement. But a third camp — and it was a loud one — found the whole crossover genuinely delightful, a piece of chaotic 2026 energy landing exactly where nobody expected it.

SpaceX leaned into it. The company’s official response to the scrub notably opened with an apology to Minaj — a move that only added fuel to the viral fire.

Fan reactions were equally split on Minaj’s side. “Dear old Nicki, please call back,” one person wrote, referencing her increasingly public alignment with Musk and the MAGA movement. “Not y’all mad she’s going to see a rocket launch with her family,” another pushed back.

What Starship V3 Actually Is — and Why It Matters

Beyond the celebrity storyline, Thursday’s attempt was a genuinely significant moment in spaceflight. Starship V3 isn’t just an upgrade — it’s a complete overhaul of the vehicle that first launched in April 2023. It’s bigger, more powerful, and redesigned with three fins instead of four for smoother Earth landings. It’s also the first version of Starship that SpaceX considers capable of flying to the moon and Mars.

If all goes to plan, Starship V3 will fly on NASA’s Artemis 3 mission — a docking test in Earth orbit — in mid to late 2027, and land astronauts on the moon on Artemis 4 in late 2028. Thursday was also the first attempted liftoff from Starbase’s brand-new Pad 2, a fully upgraded launch facility. A new rocket on a new pad hitting first-time snags wasn’t exactly shocking to engineers, but the stakes don’t get much higher.

SpaceX also announced this week that cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang — who previously financed the world’s first private polar spaceflight aboard a Dragon capsule — will lead the first private Mars flyby mission aboard a future Starship. “A lot of people talk about Mars,” Wang said in a video. “Let’s get it started with a flyby.”

Oh, and the week also saw SpaceX file its IPO prospectus publicly — with the company expected to be the largest IPO in history, with a valuation potentially reaching $2 trillion.

Nicki, Elon, and the Political Picture

Minaj’s visit to Starbase didn’t happen in a vacuum. She and Musk have been publicly friendly on X for months, and her appearance fits a pattern of increasingly visible alignment with conservative figures. In January, she called Donald Trump her “number one fan” onstage alongside the president. Last December, she appeared at Erika Kirk’s TPUSA event, cementing her place in the MAGA orbit. Trump himself has attended at least two SpaceX launches, and Musk co-led the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year.

For longtime fans, the shift has been jarring. For others, it’s made her more compelling. Either way, Nicki Minaj has never struggled to hold the room — even when the rocket doesn’t cooperate.

Whether she stuck around South Texas for Friday’s second attempt, nobody said. But the image of her standing at Starbase in that T-shirt, six minutes from liftoff, watching the countdown clock freeze — it’s already the kind of moment that writes itself into pop culture without even trying.

Starships were meant to fly. This one just needed one more day.

The post Nicki Minaj Shows Up at SpaceX Starship Launch — Then Gets Left on the Ground appeared first on Cream.

• Nicki Minaj made a surprise appearance at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas for the Starship V3 launch attempt
• The launch was scrubbed at roughly T-minus 40 seconds due to a hydraulic pin malfunction and other technical issues
• Minaj wore a SpaceX Starship T-shirt and praised Elon Musk on camera, calling the event “historic”
• SpaceX’s Space.com coverage headline literally read: “Sorry, Nicki Minaj” — the internet ran with it
• The next launch attempt was pushed to Friday evening, with no word on whether Minaj would return

Nicki Minaj showed up to watch history. The rocket had other plans.

The rapper made a surprise appearance Thursday evening at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas, arriving just in time to watch the company attempt to launch its brand-new Starship V3 megarocket for the very first time. It was Flight 12 for the Starship program overall, the debut of a new pad, and a genuinely major milestone for the future of space travel. Then, with about 40 seconds left on the countdown clock, the whole thing stopped.

A hydraulic pin holding a tower arm in place failed to retract. Engineers couldn’t troubleshoot the issue — or a separate problem with the water diverter under the launch pad — fast enough to stay within safe propellant temperature windows. SpaceX called it around 7:37 p.m. EDT, with time still left in the window but no path forward for the night. The next attempt was pushed to Friday evening.

“We’re learning a lot about these systems as we execute them for the first time, and we’re not able to basically troubleshoot all of these issues in those final seconds to get to launch,” SpaceX communications lead Dan Huot said on the company’s livestream. He called the evening a “wet dress rehearsal” and said the team would “figure out what tripped us up before launch, and then actually get into a flight tomorrow.”

All of that would have been a perfectly normal scrub story — if Nicki Minaj hadn’t been standing right there in a SpaceX Starship T-shirt.

“This Is Historic” — And Then It Wasn’t

Minaj’s appearance at the webcast caught the on-site hosts visibly off guard. One of them noted that launches are open to the public, that “anybody can come and watch” — and Minaj lit up at that. “This is a lot of fun, I am excited,” she said. When a host told her there were six and a half minutes left in the countdown, she grabbed onto it: “6 minutes left. Oh my gosh, this is historic, this is a major moment, y’all.”

It was also, she confirmed on camera, her very first rocket launch in person.

Then a host noticed her shirt. Starship. The same name as one of Minaj’s biggest songs — the 2012 anthemic hit from Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded that became a genuine global earworm. The host asked if she’d predicted the future. “I do not know,” Minaj replied, laughing.

She also gave what she called a “major shoutout” to the man behind it all. “Elon, thank you for everything that you’re doing for humanity,” she said on camera. “He’s the man, for sure.”

Elon Musk shared the clip on X with a simple welcome: “Welcome to Starbase, @NICKIMINAJ!” Minaj replied with a thank you and called the site “such a magical place.”

And then the countdown hit T-minus 40 seconds, reset, inched forward again, reset again — and eventually, the launch was scrubbed entirely.

The Internet Was Ready

Space.com’s headline for the scrub story literally read: “Sorry, Nicki Minaj.” That was all the internet needed.

Memes flooded X within minutes. “Starbase? More like star-based queen,” one viral post read. Another suggested the next launch attempt would feature “pink thrusters, backup dancers, and DJ Khaled yelling ‘Another one!’ from mission control.” One commenter, less charmed by the crossover, wrote: “Why the [expletive] would you invite Nicki Minaj to Starbase? The relevancy is mind boggling…” — a line that SpaceX’s own social team appeared to lean into when they addressed Minaj directly in their post-scrub messaging.

Others came to her defense just as quickly. “Not y’all mad she’s going to see a rocket launch with her family,” one person pushed back. The divide was sharp and loud and very, very online.

What Was Actually at Stake

Underneath the memes, the Starship V3 launch is genuinely significant. This isn’t just another test flight — it’s the first version of Starship that SpaceX and Elon Musk consider capable of flying to the moon and Mars. It debuts on a new pad (Pad 2) at Starbase, features 50% larger and stronger fins, and has been redesigned down to three fins instead of four for smoother Earth landings. The engines are more powerful too.

If things go to plan, this is the vehicle that flies on NASA’s Artemis 3 mission — a docking test in Earth orbit — in mid-to-late 2027, and the one that lands astronauts on the moon on Artemis 4 in late 2028. Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander is also in the running, but SpaceX is pushing hard.

And on the same day as the scrub, SpaceX announced something even bigger: cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang — who financed the private polar spaceflight Fram2 in 2025 — will lead the world’s first private crewed flyby of Mars. “A lot of people talk about Mars,” Wang said in a video announcement. “We like Mars, we’re gonna land on Mars. We’re gonna do a city on Mars. But let’s get it started with a flyby.”

So yes, there was a lot going on at Starbase on Thursday. Nicki Minaj just happened to be standing in the middle of it.

The Politics Hovering Over All of It

Minaj’s appearance didn’t happen in a vacuum. Her praise of Musk comes during what’s been a politically charged stretch for the rapper. Last December, she attended Erika Kirk’s Turning Point USA event and publicly aligned herself with the MAGA movement and the Trump administration — a move that cost her significant goodwill with a portion of her fanbase, the Barbz. “Dear old Nicki, please call back,” one fan wrote in response to Thursday’s Musk shoutout. The sentiment has become something of a refrain.

Others, though, have pushed back on the backlash, arguing that watching a rocket launch is hardly a political statement. Minaj herself has shown no interest in softening her positions or walking anything back.

Whether she returns to Starbase for the rescheduled Friday attempt is an open question. But after one of the more surreal celebrity cameos in recent memory — a scrubbed rocket launch, a viral meme cycle, and a song called “Starships” at the center of it all — the internet has already decided this one belongs to the timeline.

The rocket still hasn’t flown. The song still slaps. And somewhere in South Texas, they’re checking that hydraulic pin.

The post Nicki Minaj at SpaceX Launch — And Then It Scrubbed appeared first on Cream.

• Elon Musk called The Boys series finale “pathetic” on X after a scene of Homelander begging for his life went viral
• Showrunner Eric Kripke celebrated the review on Instagram, calling it the best he’ll ever get
• The finale also featured a thinly veiled Musk parody character called “The Disruptor” — whom Homelander murders in space
• Musk’s complaint echoed a vocal subset of fans who missed that Homelander was always meant to be the villain
• Kripke confirmed The Disruptor was a deliberate satirical target, joking “what made you think it was Elon Musk?”

Elon Musk did The Boys the biggest favor of its final season — he complained about it on the internet.

After the Prime Video series wrapped its five-season run this week with the episode Blood and Bone, Musk took to X to deliver a one-word verdict on the finale: “Pathetic.” His response came after a screenshot circulated showing Homelander — bloodied, powerless, on his knees — begging Billy Butcher for his life with some of the most undignified dialogue the show has ever produced. “I’ll f—king suck your d—k,” Homelander pleads. “You want me to eat s—t? I’ll eat your f—king s—t.”

Showrunner Eric Kripke saw the post late Wednesday night and immediately reposted it to his Instagram. “OMG this is his review of what @TheBoysTV did to Homelander, I’ll never get a better review ever,” he wrote. Cast members — including Antony Starr, who plays Homelander — showed up in the comments to laugh along.

The Disruptor in the Room

What Musk conspicuously didn’t mention was the other reason his name was already all over the finale’s discourse before he ever weighed in.

The episode introduces a character billed as “The Disruptor” — a wealthy tech mogul with a passion for space travel, white fertility rates, and a black-on-black embroidered baseball cap. He attempts to strong-arm Homelander in the Oval Office. Homelander’s response is to fly him into orbit and drop him. “He’s an astronaut,” Homelander says breezily upon returning to Earth. “I took him to space.”

When Deadline asked Kripke about the rather obvious inspiration for the character, he played coy with maximum enjoyment. “What made you think it was Elon Musk?” he said. “Yeah, I mean, the idea of the Disruptor was a character that has been continually pitched throughout the season, as just something that is really existing in the world that was just such a perfect target, and it never really fit before. But then we needed this one scene to prove where Homelander’s head was at for this final episode.” Co-writer David Reed, along with Judalina Neira, brought the character in, Kripke explained — describing it as “just one last little satirical target before we end the show.”

The irony of Musk publicly objecting to Homelander’s ending — while saying nothing about being symbolically murdered in space in the same episode — was not lost on anyone.

The Homelander Problem

Musk’s reaction wasn’t happening in a vacuum. He was responding to an X post from a user who had already summed up a certain corner of the fandom’s frustration: “The show writers turned Homelander into a Trump analogue, and this is how they choose to end The Boys. This entire show was just a deranged sexual humiliation fantasy projected onto Trump.”

This is the part that would be funny if it weren’t so exhausting. The Boys has never been subtle. Homelander lets a plane full of passengers die in the very first episode. The show has spent five seasons carefully, painstakingly, repeatedly illustrating that beneath the cape and the laser eyes and the “God” complex is a man-child drowning in unprocessed trauma — someone who crumbles the moment he doesn’t get exactly what he wants. The finale’s final act made it literal: with his powers stripped, Homelander fought Butcher one-on-one and folded almost immediately. His own son had already called him out in the same episode for being exactly what he always was — a tantrum-throwing baby who needed the world’s approval to function.

A shockingly large number of viewers apparently needed that spelled out for them. Some didn’t clock Homelander as the villain until Season 3. Others, apparently, still haven’t.

As for the finale itself — it sticks the landing without exactly soaring. It’s a satisfying, if predictable, close to a show that got increasingly wobbly in its later seasons. Karl Urban’s Butcher gets the kill, caving in Homelander’s skull with a crowbar after the supe spends his final moments on his knees. It’s not poetic. It’s not supposed to be. That’s entirely the point.

Kripke has been threading this needle for years — the show has repeatedly and accidentally predicted real-world Trump moments throughout its final season, a fact that has become its own running gag in press coverage. The Disruptor is just the last joke before the curtain comes down.

All five seasons of The Boys are now streaming on Prime Video. And somewhere, Eric Kripke has that screenshot framed.

The post Elon Musk Hates The Boys Finale, Kripke Is Thrilled appeared first on Cream.

• Ashley St. Clair, 27, posted a tell-all TikTok detailing her relationship with Elon Musk, the father of her son Romulus
• She claims Musk told her he wasn’t sure if he’d fathered Amber Heard’s children but admitted he’d asked Heard about it
• St. Clair says Musk talked about having a “legion of children” via surrogates before “the apocalypse or Civil War”
• She also alleges Musk was secretly supporting Donald Trump before publicly claiming the Butler assassination attempt changed his mind
• St. Clair separately blasted Musk on Instagram for tweeting about his transgender daughter Vivian, saying it’s “a promotion of violence”

Ashley St. Clair apparently didn’t sign an NDA — and she wants you to know it.

The 27-year-old former conservative influencer posted a lengthy “get ready with me” TikTok video on May 15 that is, by any measure, one of the most detailed public accounts of what it’s actually like to be in Elon Musk’s orbit. And she held almost nothing back — touching on Amber Heard paternity rumors, secret Trump political dealings, eugenics-adjacent baby talk, and what she describes as Musk’s casual, ongoing preparations for the end of civilization.

St. Clair, who welcomed a son named Romulus with Musk in September 2024, says their relationship began in 2023 when she was 25 and he was 52. It became, in her words, “emotionally intimate.” A trip to St. Barts is where things shifted.

“At that point in my life, because I’m involved in MAGA and the right wing and I’m already a single mom,” she explained in the video, “the chances of me getting married and the white picket fence and the white dress, I believed that was out the window for me because I was already ‘stained’ as a single mom. But I wanted nothing more than to be a mom. I wanted more kids.”

She says she was ovulating during the St. Barts trip, they agreed to have a child, and his resources — financial and otherwise — made the idea appealing. It wasn’t until after she got pregnant that things started getting, as she put it, “weird.”

What Elon Said About Amber Heard, Grimes, and Shivon Zilis

Before agreeing to have his child, St. Clair says she did her due diligence and asked Musk point-blank about the other women in his life. She says she never wanted to put another woman in a situation where they believed they were in a monogamous relationship.

According to St. Clair, Musk told her things were “good” with Grimes — whose real name is Claire Boucher and who shares three children with Musk — and that his relationship with Tesla exec Shivon Zilis, who has welcomed four children with Musk via IVF, was essentially a “financial agreement.”

Then came the Amber Heard question. Rumors have long swirled that Musk may be the biological father of Heard’s children — Heard, who dated Musk for about a year in 2017, welcomed a daughter via surrogate in 2021 and twins via IVF in 2024, and is raising all three as a single mother. Reports have previously speculated that the former couple created embryos together during their relationship.

St. Clair says she went straight to the source.

“I asked straight up about Amber Heard,” she said. “He’s like, ‘No, I actually asked her because I thought [her kids] were mine, but she says that they’re not.’ At least that’s what he told me, but he also has a complicated relationship with the truth, so who knows?”

So by St. Clair’s account, Musk himself suspected he might be the father — and had to ask Heard directly. Whether that’s the full truth is another matter entirely, and St. Clair’s own caveat about his relationship with honesty hangs over the whole thing.

The Trump Revelation

St. Clair didn’t stop at the personal. She also took aim at Musk’s public political narrative, claiming he was actively working to support Donald Trump long before he made his dramatic public declaration of loyalty following the Butler assassination attempt in July 2024.

“When Butler happened — the assassination attempt on Trump — Elon comes out, and he’s like, ‘It’s this moment I have no choice but to support Donald Trump,'” she recalled. “I’m like, dude, what the f**k? You’ve already been working on a PAC for him. Like, you were already supporting him. Why are you lying about this being the catalyst for supporting Trump?”

She described Musk as someone who is very willing to “lie publicly and privately about stupid s**t” and said his habit of “misrepresenting things” made her deeply uncomfortable — particularly while she was pregnant with his child.

“A Legion of Children” Before the Apocalypse

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping section of the video involves what St. Clair says Musk told her about his reasons for wanting more children. She had already heard the rumors about Musk allegedly maintaining a “harem” of women he hoped to have children with — and her account suggests those rumors may not be entirely unfounded.

She says Musk’s views on immigration leaned more toward a eugenics framework than any concern for national security, and that the baby conversations took a genuinely alarming turn.

“While I’m pregnant, he’s telling me we need to use surrogates if we want to have a legion of children before the apocalypse or before the Civil War in America,” she said.

He also allegedly told her she should have a C-section because it’s “better for the head and the brain size” of the baby.

Musk, for context, has 14 known children with four different women: ex-wife Justine Wilson, Grimes, Zilis, and St. Clair. St. Clair says she also received messages from X creator Tiffany Fong claiming Musk was attempting to have a child with her just months after Romulus was born.

St. Clair closed out the video by noting she has “a bunch of attorneys watching,” is currently in “three different courts,” and has “people following me all the time” — context that makes the timing of this video feel less like a content play and more like someone who has decided she has nothing left to lose by talking.

@ashstc

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The Transgender Daughter Dispute

The TikTok wasn’t the only place St. Clair went after Musk this weekend. On May 17, she took to her Instagram Stories to call him out over a post he made on X that read: “The woke mind virus killed my son.”

The comment was directed at Musk’s transgender daughter Vivian Wilson, who changed her name and gender in 2022. The two are estranged — Musk has previously said in interviews that he had “lost” her and that she was “dead” to him.

St. Clair was having none of it. “Stop tweeting about your children in this way,” she wrote. “This is just NOT OK and IMO a promotion of violence against trans individuals.”

She went further, drawing a direct line between Musk’s posts and the safety of people around him: “When [Elon] would talk about me online, the threats against my family have always increased. This is true whether it is negative or positive. Elon is aware that he has this impact, particularly on those he posts negative about. The guy has 24/7 security.”

It’s a striking turn for someone who built her platform in MAGA circles — and it points to just how completely her relationship with Musk, and apparently with the politics she once championed, has broken down. In January, St. Clair filed a lawsuit against Musk’s company xAI over sexualized deepfakes of her created on X using Grok. The legal battles, it seems, are far from over.

The post Ashley St. Clair Spills Everything on Elon Musk appeared first on Cream.

• Alec Baldwin posted a photo of Lupita Nyong’o on Instagram telling Elon Musk “she IS the most beautiful woman in the world”
• Musk agreed with conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s claim that Nyong’o was the wrong casting choice for Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey
• Nolan confirmed Nyong’o will play both Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra in a recent Time magazine profile
• Whoopi Goldberg also defended Nyong’o on The View, telling Musk to “look in a mirror” before commenting on anyone’s looks
• The Odyssey opens in theaters July 17, 2026, with a cast that includes Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Robert Pattinson

Alec Baldwin has had enough of Elon Musk’s commentary on Christopher Nolan’s casting choices — and he made it very clear on Instagram.

After Musk repeatedly criticized the decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in Nolan’s upcoming epic The Odyssey, Baldwin fired back with a photo of the Oscar-winning actress and a pointed message: “Dear Elon… but she IS the most beautiful woman in the world…Alec.” His wife, Hilaria Baldwin, co-signed immediately, dropping fire and heart emojis in the comments.

Simple. Direct. And for Nyong’o’s defenders, completely satisfying.

How This All Started

The controversy kicked into high gear after conservative commentator Matt Walsh posted on X, writing that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world'” and accusing Nolan of casting her only to avoid accusations of racism. He called the director “technically talented but a coward.”

Musk responded to Walsh’s post with a single word: “True.” He’d also previously written that Nolan “has lost his integrity” by casting Nyong’o in the role. And in a separate post responding to someone accusing Nolan of “race swapping,” Musk suggested the director “wants all the awards” — a dig at the Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards for Best Picture eligibility.

It’s a line of attack that falls apart pretty quickly when you consider that Nolan’s last film, Oppenheimer, featured an almost entirely white cast and still won Best Picture and Best Director in 2024, earning nearly $1 billion at the global box office in the process. The film met the Academy’s diversity requirements through its production staff, not its on-screen cast.

Musk’s fixation on the film has been relentless. According to reporting from The Daily Beast, he promoted more than two dozen X posts criticizing The Odyssey — at least 15 of them in a single Friday alone — and has been accused of using the platform’s algorithm to boost his own posts on the subject. He also turned his attention to former Academy president David Rubin, the man who oversaw the implementation of the inclusion standards, writing an expletive-filled attack and telling followers to boo Rubin on sight.

Walsh returned to the subject the following day, arguing that if a white actress like Sydney Sweeney had been cast as “the most beautiful woman in Africa” in a film set on that continent, there would be outrage. Musk called it “such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”

What Nolan Actually Confirmed

Nyong’o has been attached to The Odyssey since The Hollywood Reporter first reported her involvement back in November 2024, but her exact role remained unconfirmed for months — she hasn’t appeared in either of the film’s two released trailers. That changed with a Time magazine profile published May 12, in which Nolan confirmed she’ll play not one but two roles: Helen of Troy and Helen’s sister Clytemnestra.

In Homer’s epics, Helen is the woman whose abduction by the Trojan prince Paris ignited the Trojan War — “the face that launched a thousand ships.” She appears in The Odyssey in a scene with Telemachus, the character Tom Holland plays in Nolan’s film. Clytemnestra, meanwhile, is married to Agamemnon — here played by Benny Safdie — the Greek commander whose soldiers include Matt Damon’s Odysseus.

As for the claim that Helen of Troy was definitively white: there is no historical evidence that any of the characters in Homer’s epics actually existed at all. In ancient Greek mythology, Helen’s race is never explicitly addressed, though she is described as having golden hair. The argument that Nyong’o’s casting is “historically inaccurate” doesn’t have much of a foundation to stand on.

Nolan himself addressed the backlash in the Time interview, saying of critics: “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything.”

The Defense Keeps Coming

Baldwin isn’t alone. Whoopi Goldberg went after Musk directly on The View back in February, pointing out that Nyong’o “is also considered one of the world’s most beautiful women.” She didn’t stop there. “I would suggest looking in a mirror if you have any concerns about people’s looks,” Goldberg told Musk on air. “I don’t know why you feel like you need to speak on this.”

And it’s worth remembering: Lupita Nyong’o was named People‘s Most Beautiful Woman in the World — a title that carries its own weight in this particular argument.

The full cast Nolan has assembled for The Odyssey is genuinely staggering: Damon as Odysseus, Holland as Telemachus, Zendaya as Athena, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Elliot Page as Achilles, Mia Goth, and John Leguizamo. The film hits theaters on July 17, 2026.

Nolan’s bet is on the movie itself doing the talking. Based on the response to his trailers — and the A-list lineup he’s assembled — a lot of people are already planning to show up and see it for themselves.

The post Alec Baldwin Defends Lupita Nyong’o After Elon Musk Slams Odyssey Casting appeared first on Cream.

• Elon Musk has been on a days-long X rampage attacking Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey over its diverse casting choices
• Musk agreed with conservative commentator Matt Walsh that Nolan is “technically talented but a coward” for casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy
• Musk’s central argument — that Nolan is chasing Oscar eligibility through diverse casting — is factually inaccurate, as his own film Oppenheimer won Best Picture under the same rules with a nearly all-white cast
• Nolan has defended his choices in a new Time interview, comparing his approach to the same creative rigor he brought to Interstellar
• The Odyssey, which carries a $250 million budget, has already sold out IMAX screenings a year in advance and is projected to be one of the summer’s biggest hits

Elon Musk has found his new culture war battlefield, and it’s ancient Greece. The world’s richest man has spent the better part of this week flooding X with posts attacking Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic The Odyssey — specifically targeting the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy — and showing absolutely no signs of letting up.

The flashpoint came when a new Time magazine cover story on Nolan confirmed what had been circulating as rumor for months: Nyong’o, the Oscar-winning actress best known for 12 Years a Slave and the Black Panther franchise, would not only be playing Helen of Troy — described in Homer’s epic as “the face that launched a thousand ships” — but also her sister Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon, in a dual role. That was apparently all the fuel Musk needed.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh fired the opening shot on X, writing: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.”

Musk’s reply was two words: “True.”

It escalated from there. Over the following days, Musk declared “Shame on Chris Nolan for desecrating Homer! He will never live it down.” He agreed with a post claiming Nolan is “racist against the Greek people and their cultural heritage.” He amplified posts suggesting The Odyssey is part of a left-wing plan to “destroy Western Civilization.” He also retweeted posts mocking actor Elliot Page — who has worked with Nolan before on Inception and is rumored (though not confirmed) to have a role in the film — including an AI-generated image of Page in Greek warrior attire struggling to open a pickle jar. And when Walsh doubled down Wednesday, arguing that Hollywood would never cast a white actress as “the most beautiful woman in Africa” — floating Sydney Sweeney as his hypothetical example — Musk agreed again: “Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”

By Friday, Musk had added one more post: “Who specifically is the asshole who added DEI lies to Academy Awards eligibility instead of it just being about making the best movie?”

The Oscar Argument That Doesn’t Hold Up

This is where Musk’s central thesis starts to fall apart — badly.

His core argument is that Nolan cast diversely in order to meet the Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards for Best Picture eligibility. The problem? Those rules, established by the Academy in 2020, went into effect for films competing at the 2024 Oscars — meaning Oppenheimer, Nolan’s previous film, was subject to the exact same standards. That film had an almost entirely white cast and still won Best Picture and Best Director. Why? Because a film doesn’t have to cast diversely to qualify. It can meet the standards through crew composition, apprenticeship programs, audience development, executive representation, or a combination of any of the above. A film must satisfy just two of four broad criteria. Musk’s posts amplified a version of the rules that claimed casting diversity was mandatory — that’s simply not accurate.

In other words: Nolan’s Oppenheimer proves his own point wrong.

The broader criticism — that casting a Black actress as a mythological Greek figure is historically inaccurate — also runs into some obvious problems. Helen of Troy is a mythological character. Her father, in the myth, is Zeus in the form of a swan. There is no historical record of Helen of Troy. There is no DNA sample. The ancient Mediterranean world was, by the accounts of actual historians, genuinely multiethnic. As Sunny Hostin noted during a segment on The View this week, historians have long explored how Greek mythology was shaped by influences from ancient Egypt and North Africa.

Whoopi Goldberg, for her part, had a more direct suggestion for anyone bothered by the casting: don’t watch it.

What Nolan Actually Said

Nolan, who famously doesn’t carry a smartphone and keeps his work computer offline, has been characteristically unbothered — or at least performing unbothered very well. In his Time interview, he addressed the controversy around his decision to cast rapper Travis Scott as a Greek bard, defending it as a genuine artistic choice rather than a stunt to lure younger viewers.

“I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap,” Nolan said.

He also drew a direct parallel between his approach to The Odyssey and the methodology he used on Interstellar — rigorously researching the world he was building and then making the most informed creative choices he could. “For Interstellar, you’re looking at, ‘What is the best speculation of the future?’ When you’re looking at the ancient past, it’s actually the same thing. What is the best speculation, and how can I use that to create a world?” he told Time. “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar.”

On the question of fan response and repeating certain creative tropes — Nolan is well aware he makes a lot of movies about brilliant men trying to get home to their families — the director was philosophical. “You have to be comfortable with repeating yourself, if it’s right for the project,” he said. “If you’re paying too much attention to what people are pointing out in your work, you’d be paralyzed.”

The Time journalist who interviewed him noted that even without a smartphone, “the internet has found him.”

The Movie Itself

The Odyssey is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious films in recent memory regardless of the noise surrounding it. Nolan’s follow-up to Oppenheimer — which made nearly $1 billion in 2023 and swept the Academy Awards — carries a reported $250 million budget, making it the most expensive film of his career. It was shot across multiple countries, including Greece, Italy, Iceland, and Scotland, though the production also drew some controversy for filming in the disputed Western Sahara territory occupied by Morocco.

The ensemble cast is stacked: Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, with Tom Holland as his son Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Zendaya as Athena, and Charlize Theron as Calypso. The trailer, which has already generated its own separate wave of discourse — The Hollywood Reporter‘s James Hibberd wrote that “everybody sounds like they’re from Ohio” — has done nothing to dampen anticipation. IMAX screenings have reportedly sold out a year in advance. Deadline’s summer box office preview projects it as one of the season’s top-grossing films.

A recent promotional campaign featured LeBron James and his son drawing parallels to Odysseus and Telemachus, with James narrating over footage from the film while dribbling a basketball — which, depending on your tolerance for anachronism, is either inspired or absolutely unhinged. The internet, predictably, split down the middle.

Lupita Nyong’o Doesn’t Need Anyone’s Defense — But She’s Getting It Anyway

Nyong’o herself hasn’t publicly responded to Musk’s posts. But the actress — a Yale School of Drama graduate who won her Oscar for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, delivered one of the most haunting performances of the last decade in Jordan Peele’s Us, and headlined A Quiet Place: Day One — has no shortage of people in her corner.

The pushback online has been swift and pointed. Many have noted the obvious: that Lupita Nyong’o is, by any reasonable measure, one of the most beautiful and talented actresses working today, and that the outrage over her playing a fictional mythological figure whose own parentage in the source material involves a god disguised as a swan is, at minimum, an odd hill to plant a flag on.

Kevin Sorbo — who played Hercules in the 1990s TV series, itself a show not exactly known for its rigorous historical fidelity — apparently weighed in against Nyong’o’s casting, and was quickly reminded of that fact by pretty much everyone on the internet.

Musk, for his part, has been doing this since January. That’s when he first posted that “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity” in response to early rumors about Nyong’o’s casting. The Time confirmation just gave him a fresh reason to go louder. A recent study found that Musk had tweeted about race approximately 850 times in recent months. This week’s posts fit the pattern.

The Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17. Whatever Musk posts between now and then, the IMAX seats are already gone.

The post Elon Musk’s Odyssey Crusade: The Facts vs. The Rant appeared first on Cream.

• Elon Musk has spent days on X attacking Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey over its diverse casting, calling it Oscar-chasing and accusing Nolan of “desecrating Homer”
• Lupita Nyong’o is confirmed to play Helen of Troy — and her sister Clytemnestra — in the $250 million epic, out July 17
• Musk amplified misinformation about the Academy’s diversity standards, which are far broader than he implied
• Nolan has pushed back calmly, defending his choices in a lengthy Time profile while making clear he won’t be paralyzed by the noise
• Whoopi Goldberg, Sunny Hostin, and much of social media have fired back at Musk’s commentary

Elon Musk has a lot of opinions about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. None of them are new. But this week, they reached a new pitch — a days-long campaign on X that has included amplifying misinformation, agreeing with racist commentary, and personally attacking one of the most acclaimed directors working today.

It started in earnest after a sweeping Time magazine profile of Nolan confirmed what had previously been rumored: Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o will play Helen of Troy in the film — described in Homer’s epic as the most beautiful woman in the world — and, in a twist, also play Helen’s sister Clytemnestra. The dual casting is one of several bold choices Nolan has made in adapting the ancient poem, which hits theaters July 17 with a reported $250 million budget, making it the most expensive film of his career.

For Musk, the confirmation was fuel. He had already weighed in back in January, writing that “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity” when the casting was still a rumor. This week he went further.

What Musk Actually Said

The posts came fast. Musk replied “True” to Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh’s claim that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,'” and that Nolan is “technically talented but a coward.” When Walsh escalated — arguing that if Sydney Sweeney were cast as “the most beautiful woman in Africa,” people would “literally riot” — Musk chimed in again: “Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”

He also replied “True” to a post accusing Nolan of being “racist against the Greek people and their cultural heritage.” He reposted a tweet suggesting Nolan is stomping on Homer’s grave. On Thursday, he endorsed a post claiming The Odyssey is part of a left-wing plan to “destroy Western Civilization.” And on Friday, he attacked Nolan directly: “Shame on Chris Nolan for desecrating Homer! He will never live it down.”

Musk also mocked Elliot Page, who is rumored — though not confirmed — to be playing Achilles’ Ghost in the film. Musk reacted to an AI-generated image of Page in Greek warrior attire struggling to open a pickle jar, amplifying transphobic content to his 240 million followers. Page, who worked with Nolan previously on Inception, came out as transgender in 2020.

The throughline of Musk’s argument was that Nolan cast Nyong’o to chase awards. “He wants the awards,” Musk wrote, responding to a user who claimed the Academy Awards requires diverse on-screen casting for Best Picture eligibility.

The Oscar Rules Are Not What Musk Claimed

That claim is where the misinformation comes in — and it matters.

To be eligible for Best Picture, films must meet two of four Academy diversity standards — and the criteria are far more flexible than Musk’s posts implied. The first standard can be met through on-screen representation, but it can also be satisfied if the film’s main theme centers on an underrepresented group. The second can be met by having six crew members (not just department heads) from underrepresented groups, or by having 30% of the overall crew qualify. The third standard involves studio internship and training programs. The fourth covers diversity in a film’s marketing, publicity, or distribution teams.

In other words: a film could qualify for Best Picture without changing a single casting decision. The post Musk amplified stripped all of that nuance away — and he pushed it to nearly a quarter billion followers.

Nolan’s Response: Calm, Thorough, and Completely Unbothered

Nolan, characteristically, is not playing defense on social media. He doesn’t carry a smartphone. But in his Time interview, he addressed the criticism with a kind of unhurried confidence that suggests he’s thought through every decision and isn’t losing sleep over X.

On the Travis Scott casting — Scott plays a bard — Nolan was direct: “I cast him because I wanted to nod towards the idea that this story has been handed down as oral poetry, which is analogous to rap.” On the armor controversy (critics have taken issue with Benny Safdie’s Agamemnon wearing dark, shiny plating), Nolan explained that blackened bronze was historically plausible and served a visual storytelling purpose. “With Agamemnon, Ellen [Mirojnick], our costume designer, is trying to communicate how elevated he is relative to everyone else. You do that through materials that would be very expensive.”

He compared his research process to Interstellar: “For Interstellar, you’re looking at, ‘What is the best speculation of the future?’ When you’re looking at the ancient past, it’s actually the same thing. ‘What is the best speculation and how can I use that to create a world?'” He added: “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don’t want people to think that you took it on frivolously.”

On the broader pressure of internet scrutiny, Nolan was equally measured: “You have to be comfortable with repeating yourself, if it’s right for the project. If you’re paying too much attention to what people are pointing out in your work, you’d be paralyzed.”

Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, echoed the director’s confidence. “He’s very faithful to Homer because that’s not somebody you rewrite. But thematically, what he looked at was really interesting,” Damon said. The Time profile also revealed that this is the first feature-length film shot entirely on IMAX — a technical achievement that required, among other things, inventing a special camera casing to muffle the notoriously loud IMAX camera during intimate scenes, and building a mirror system so actors could make eye contact around the enormous equipment.

The Casting That’s Actually at the Center of This

Nyong’o is, by any measure, a remarkable choice for Helen of Troy. A Yale School of Drama graduate, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave, built a global following through the Black Panther franchise, and delivered a quietly devastating lead performance in A Quiet Place: Day One. The idea that she’s some kind of compromise casting is, to put it plainly, absurd.

Defenders of the film have also pointed out something the loudest critics keep glossing over: Helen of Troy is a mythological figure. There is no historical record of her existence, no evidence of what she looked like, and no archaeological basis for the claim that she was “fair-skinned and blonde.” She is a character in a poem, not a historical person — which is why, as some have noted on Reddit and elsewhere, adapting her appearance is no more of a distortion than the entire concept of a film about a man escaping a one-eyed giant.

Sunny Hostin made a related point on The View, noting that historians have explored how Greek mythology was influenced by ancient Egypt and North Africa. Whoopi Goldberg was more direct: “I don’t know if you realize this, Lupita is also considered one of the world’s most beautiful women. So, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.” She also had a message for Musk specifically: “Don’t bother to clown me, baby. I know what I look like. There’s so many things I want to say to you that are rude and awful, but I won’t do it. But know that I’m thinking it.”

Goldberg did wade into murkier territory, remarking that Musk was “OK with apartheid” growing up in South Africa, before quickly walking it back: “I don’t know if he was an ‘apartheid apologist’ and I take it back.”

The Accents, The LeBron Promo, and Everything Else

The casting controversy isn’t the only thing drawing fire. When the latest trailer dropped, The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd wrote that “everybody sounds like they’re from Ohio,” noting that Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson appear to be using American accents. Hibberd pointed out that other historical epics, like Gladiator, defaulted to British accents — also historically inaccurate, but at least carrying the weight of tradition.

The trailer also features the word “Daddy” — used by Telemachus to address his father — which became its own mini-controversy online. And a promotional clip featuring LeBron James and his son as parallels to Odysseus and Telemachus, with LeBron dribbling a basketball over imagery from the film, raised eyebrows in some quarters.

None of it seems to be dampening anticipation for the actual film. Deadline reported last week that The Odyssey is projected to be one of the summer’s top-grossing movies — and IMAX screenings have already sold out a full year in advance. Nolan’s follow-up to Oppenheimer, which made nearly $1 billion and won seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, was always going to be an event. The question is whether the noise surrounding it will matter once people actually see it.

Nolan, who has been dreaming about making this film for over 20 years — he was briefly in talks to direct 2004’s Troy before that fell through — seems to already know the answer. “Like the Trojan Horse,” Time’s profile noted, “The Odyssey can be enjoyed as pure spectacle — or it can be cracked open to reveal something deeply human.”

Elon Musk has yet to weigh in on the skin color of the Cyclops.

The post Elon Musk’s Days-Long War on The Odyssey, Explained appeared first on Cream.